A vigil
will be held outside the Atos assessment centre in Croydon on 3rd December in
remembrance of disabled and ill people who have suffered as a result of the
punitive regime of assessments carried out by Atos Healthcare to test Incapacity
Benefit/Employment and Support Allowance claimants. Croydon and Bromley Disabled
People Against Cuts (DPAC) are organising the event in response to John
McDonnell MP’s call for International Day of Disabled People which falls on the
3rd to be held this year to remember all Atos victims.

73
disabled people found ‘fit for work’ through Atos Healthcare’s notorious Work
Capability Assessments die every week. Some die of the conditions Atos have
assessed them on, others take their own lives in sheer desperation at the
hopelessness of their situation.

The
British Medical Association voted overwhelmingly that these Assessments are
unethical and should be stopped with immediate effect yet the misery continues
with disabled people terrified of the day the brown envelope calling them up to
assessment comes through.

Suffering
is not limited to the thousands of disabled people undergoing the distress of
continual assessments, removal of benefits before they are even informed of any
decisions and the stress of appeals, it also affects the families, friends and
carers of disabled people.

The
13 year old son of Brian McArdle wrote to Atos to tell them they are ‘killing
genuinely disabled people like my Dad’ after his Dad died from a heart attack
the day after his benefits were stopped. Mr McArdle, having suffered a blood
clot on his brain, was left paralysed on one side, unable to speak properly and
blind in one eye and yet was summoned to an Atos work capacity assessment,
before which he suffered a further stroke.

This is
just one of thousands of similar cases across the country. People with terminal
illnesses are routinely found fit for work alongside soldiers returning from
Afghanistan with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, people with severe physical
impairments, people with learning disabilities and mental health
survivors.

Atos
enjoys a one hundred million pound contract with the Department for Work and
Pensions and last year their Chief Executive pocketed a cool one million pound
bonus for running a company linked to bullying of staff and failing to pay
workers a living wage.

Meanwhile
the tax-payer picks up an extra fifty million bill for the cost of appeals
against judgements made through the Atos WCA process.

Atos
carries out its contract with the Department for Work and Pensions with callous
disregard for the welfare of disabled people. The General Medical Council are
investigating numerous healthcare staff employed by Atos for professional
misconduct while the assessment centre in Croydon is not even accessible to
wheelchair users, leaving them having to travel miles away to an alternative
centre.

The vigil
is being called by members of Croydon and Bromley Disabled People Against Cuts
but we invite everyone who believes in social justice and the rights of disabled
people to join us.

About Me

Bromley Cuts Concern has been formed to scrutinise and, where necessary, oppose the forthcoming cuts programme to be implemented by Bromley Council. We seek to be a broad, community-based group of concerned residents, independent of any political party. We believe that the best way to cut the country’s deficit would be to clamp down on tax evasion, tighten up tax avoidance loopholes and address the appalling under-collection of taxes. Combined, these could generate up to £100 billion a year according to the New Economics Foundation. Action on tax would mainly affect those better able to pay whereas cutting public expenditure disproportionately hits the poor.